This shows how popular Linux has become that this is even a concern now. I wonder if not having enough information is plaguing kernel developers still and if this is by and large why you have to be a "geek" to get Linux to work with computer X containing hardware device Y?
Microsoft is so big and provides the OS for such a large percentage of the computers on the planet, at least the personal ones, that it isn't hard to imagine Microsoft having an edge when it comes to knowing the hardware's design. In fact, secret agreements between Microsoft and hardware vendors has long been a problem. If the design of the hardware is well understood by kernel developers and enough talent is attracted to the challenge of supporting it, drivers should be better and being a geek should be less necessary. I find that there are some annoying aspects of trying to use the latest computer for a Linux desktop. For example, anyone have difficulty streaming video on 64 bit Linux? Apparently, there isn't a stable flash implementation yet. There is work on a free implementation, but I don't know that the lightspark project has enough talent signing on. On my AMD multi core systems, Dirk Dashing which was designed for a 32 bit computer has some major problems. I've tried to let the writer know, but he hasn't solved them. Unfortunately, Dirk Dashing is closed source and probably always will be. The outfit that writes a Linux game should be sensible about supporting it over the long term. If Dirk Dashing 1 doesn't work well on my fancy quad core computer, why should I buy Dirk Dashing 2? Microsoft has done a lot of work to make sure that old software, at least popular old software, still works. This lead undoubtedly to bastardizing Windows, but it kept Microsoft popular. I hope that compatibility issues as Linux is getting somewhat obese and having to adapt to radically different computer architectures don't kill Linux's popularity in the long run. In mygamecompany's defense, Dirk Dashing runs beautifully on a Pentium 4. There is some work to make Linux as capable of running Windows software as Windows is, but I hope that that doesn't end up only making Linux more vulnerable to malware. There is some commercial software these days for Linux, but I don't see that that software is ultimately on par with or even directly competing with offerings for Xbox, PS3, a Windows PC, a Mac, etcetera. Building Linux From Scratch for an old computer, I have a system that is much tighter than what you typically see. Thing is, I've never been able to build X from scratch and even so, the system won't remain tiny if I do so. Building from scratch by the way, painful. You find out just how many dependencies there are and how complex Linux has become. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
